Homeboy

by Seth Morgan

  “As you know, all 911 calls are recorded. I also recorded our first interview. These are voice prints. Perfect match.”

  Christ! This guy’s a one man police state!

  Tarzon leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “Lemme explain my feelings, Speaker. I know it was Rooski skulled the gook. You may be a chickenshit, but you’re too crafty to panic. I’m sworn to enforce legal technicalities like the felony murder rule. But they dont govern my personal morality.” He paused, blinking thoughtfully. “As for what you did to Rooski … what you made me do … I think you’re sensitive and bright enough to suffer all you should for that without my help. You’ve got that idiotski’s ghost on your bedpost the rest of your life. So I got no personal problem with you … But Moses”—he hunched over hands folded so tightly their knuckles glowed red and white—“he’s a whole other breed, a stone killer. He gets his cookies dusting whores. They’ve been showing up dead in motel rooms and under wharf pilings and in car trunks for years. There’s talk he uses them for … weird movies. And they’ll keep on showing up dead if you dont help me here.”

  Joe’s eye was caught by a photograph behind cracked plastic in the wallet on the table. It was the same girl from the first communion portrait on the Lieutenant’s desk, several years older, in cowgirl togs atop a Shetland pony. Her broad mouth, button nose, and black bangs reminded Joe of someone …

  Tarzon’s hand snapped up the wallet, returning it to his breast pocket. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah. Girls who work for Moses have a way of dying for him.”

  “Then help me put this monster away.”

  Why? Joe wanted to ask. To save the whores who sign on as his victims? No, I gotta protect what future is possible before all that’s left me is a past. He noted a strange light playing in the cop’s eyes, a tic wriggling on his brow. Tarzon’s got more than just a professional interest in this thing, Joe told himself. He’s obsessed.

  “You shouldnt take Moses so hard,” he said. “As long as the world has stones, his type will crawl out from under them.”

  Tarzon’s temples stretched tight as drums. “It’s personal. More personal than you could imagine, judging from your jacket.”

  The phrase echoed teasingly, like the first two bars of a song whose third trembles just beyond recall.

  “I beg you, Speaker. As a human being. Give up the diamond.”

  The desperation wringing his voice gave Joe heart. “I cant, Loot. I dont know anything about any diamond.”

  “You seem pretty goddam sure you’re the only person alive who knows you stole it.”

  As he had a hundred times since the Kama Sutra caper, Joe reviewed the cast. The Sings were standup, having the Golden Boar goods on them was superfluous insurance. Belly Blast was gone from her crib when he laid the drawings out to Rooski. And Rooski, well, unless they raised him in a seance … That left only Tarzon.

  “You keep forgetting. For the record I dont know any more about a diamond than I do a gook pharmacist or fancy sports car.”

  The homicide cop’s eyes sharpened to gimlets; he screwed the cheroot into a rictus snarl. “You’re the one forgetting. When I offered you your freedom, I meant from the grave, not just these walls. Because dealing with me’s your only chance of survival, Speaker. When Moses finds you you’re dead.”

  Joe smirked at the empty scare tactic. Baby Jewels couldn’t find him out unless Tarzon gave him up, and Tarzon couldn’t betray him and still hope to recover the rock himself. Only if he surrendered the diamond was Joe in danger. He couldn’t count the number of characters he’d known who’d believed police promises and divulged evidence and been thrown to the dogs. The same way that crooks scorn citizens who fall for their schemes, cops scorn crooks who succumb to their enticements. And that contempt compounded with the hatred Tarzon must already feel, despite his denials, for being set up as Rooski’s executioner … No, Joe must keep the timeless blue tear a secret; it was his only protection.

  Yet he felt no security in this, instead he suffered a bitter selfmocking despair. He deserved to die for what he did to Rooski, something deep in him cried out for annihilation; but now his worthless breath was preserved by a lunk of crystallized carbon. Christ! Sentenced to survive! A black hilarity seized him like an ague.

  “Funny?” The cheroot was slung low in a frown. “Where’s the comedy in dying?”

  “Not dying,” Joe giggled. “Living’s the joke.”

  “You’ll be calling me when Moses runs you to ground.”

  “I sure hope to fuck not.” Joe rose to knock on the door for a guard.

  “Watch your back in there … motherfucker.”

  Joe made Yard with Kool Tool Raoul. A Mission District dopefiend, Tool was also jefe of the Guerrero Caballeros, lowriding rivals of the Mission Dukes with whom Rigo La Barba was affiliated. The tattoo on Tool’s shoulder read MI LOCA VIDA, the cholo version of BORN TO LOSE. This scrawny pendejo wheeled a mutant ’65 GTO which he claimed could outjump Crystal Blue Persuasion, though the Imp and Goat had never showed down.

  Tool and Rigo were bitter enemies on the streets, but in the pen, both being members of urban barrio gangs, they automatically became members of La Erne, the socalled Mexican Mafia, and were now sworn carnales, the Hispanic term for homeboys. Sworn blood brothers, allies to the death against La Nuestra Familia, or Nesters, whose membership represented California’s rural chilichokers.

  Hence Kool Tool spoke civilly, if not eagerly, of La Barba on the prison yard. Si, it was correct that La Barba was in la pinta. But he fell in SoCal lifting from a San Diego gutter drain a kilo of chiva floated under the border through the Tijuana sewer. So La Barba was at Chino now, the Southern Reception Center. Hearing these institutional euphemisms, Joe had to guard against imagining they’d all been admitted to some exclusive resort colony.

  “And you, ese?” Joe invited the cholo to tell his own Tale.

  Tool launched into a convoluted mestizo curse on the next thirteen whorespawned, doggysired generations of el jooge who took such a dim view of converting Detroit’s finest into fourthousandpound steeljacketed jumping beans that he whipped twelve bowlegged Receiving Stolen Properties on the Guerrero Caballeros’ spiritual advisor and sidewalk jefe for the twelvevolts in the Goat’s trunk.

  Making simpatico noises but only halflistening, Joe gave himself over to the sensory banquet offered by the Yard. The shouting softball players, popping handballs, jingling barbells, the June zephyr purring through the cyclone fencing—all tonic to ears long trapped in stone echo chambers; the smells of turned earth, new grass, and, faintly from the orchards across the highway, orange blossoms were giddy elixir to nostrils long stuffed with dirty socks and dayold farts; and after months of cornered inside horizons, even the featureless fields surrounding the prison seemed spectacular scenery. Joe plucked a blade of grass; chewed it and wondered when he’d tasted anything so sweet.

  Kool Tool suddenly clutched Joe’s shirt and pointed across the Yard, crying: “Mira! Dude’s goin for a fence parole!”

  Joe shaded his eyes and squinted into the sun. A lone convict was scrambling up the twelvefoot inside fencing. The Dodgers cap was turned backward in the flight or fight configuration.

  “Ees suicide!” Kool Tool yelped.

  Five hundred convicts stood stunned by disbelief. Then the silence was shattered by a cheer quickly joined by many: “Go for it!” “Git gone like a turkey through the corn!” “Hondele! Corre como el diablo!” “Hoo-whee, lookit whiteboy climb! Guddum spiderman what he is!” They whooped and jumped; they shucked their shirts to snap in circles around their heads, whipping on the con with the heart to hit the fence.

  A warning shot rang out from a guntower. Instantly the Yard was littered with prone men in blue. Kool Tool yanked Joe down beside him. Through the broken crab grass Joe saw Whisper still climbing, his weight swaying the fence. Reaching the to
p, he slung his shirt over the razor ribbon and concertina wire and scrambled over. He dropped to the access road between the inner and outer fences. Across the dirt road he sprinted and leaped halfway up the outer fence and started climbing again. Two, three more shots cracked the air. The guntower bulls had switched their shotguns for Ruger Mini-14 carbines. Whisper slumped, a groan swept the yard; he was hit. It was impossible to tell how badly. He clung spreadeagle halfway up the outer fence.

  The baseball cap spun lazily through the warm spring air.

  “Tack another deuce on that loco’s time,” Kool Tool muttered. Two years was the standard sentence for escape attempts. “Beats a tag on beeg toe though.”

  Joe said dully, “Deuce dont matter. He got all the natural day.”

  “Joo know heem?”

  Joe didn’t answer. He rose to one knee, preparing to run to where Whisper hung.

  Tool snatched him down by his shirt. “Doan move unteel pinche tower say, ese. Bust cap at joo.”

  A pickup truck was speeding around the access road between fences to where Whisper hung. Joe saw his head move at the sound of the engine. At least he was still alive.

  The truck braked to a halt beneath him. Momentarily it was obscured in the thin cloud of dust catching up with it. When the air cleared, a solitary figure in forestgreen stood by the front bumper, looking up at Whisper. Joe saw the greasy gleam of the shotgun barrel slung carelessly over the green shoulder. He was sure they were talking. Whisper’s bare head was turned, looking down. Even at a distance there was no mistaking the streak of dead hair. It was Rowdy McGee.

  Whisper shook his head and McGee lifted his arms and lewdly rolled his hips. He tossed back his head, laughing, and threw down the gun, tromboning a shell into its breech. It was a curious flat noise like a cough that blew a hole the size of a hubcap in Whisper’s back. The impact of the blast strummed the fencing clear around the Yard.

  Rowdy McGee calmly got back in the truck and drove away, leaving Whisper hanging lifeless on the fence. For what seemed an eternity there was no sound on the Yard save the harping of the wind through the fences. Maybe the others like Joe occupied their minds with inanities to forestall shock. All he could think was what would become of the Dodgers cap lying in the access road.

  Then its nerveless fingers loosened, and the corpse slid down the bloodied fence, crumpling at its base on denim knees.

  On the Yard’s far side, a convict jumped up and screamed an unintelligible obscenity. Before the tower guards could trade their Rugers back for shotguns with birdshot loads and draw beads, the whole Yard was on its feet shaking fists and howling. Cons witnessing the murder from cells overlooking the Yard joined in the uproar. They yelled and screamed and raked tin cups across window bars. The Yard P.A. whined and popped but couldn’t be heard over the tumult. Now they were dropping burning paper and bedclothes from the cell windows.

  Suddenly convicts were babbling a different tune and pointing toward the Yard gates. A platoon of guards was pouring through and forming a flying wedge. They were outfitted in full riot equipment: helmets with Plexiglas faceshields, flak jackets, gas masks; they wielded yardlong riot sticks. Two jumpsuited Gooners armed with fortymillimeter grenade launchers led them in jogging lockstep.

  At an unheard order, on went the guards’ masks. “Gas! Gaassss …” the warning spread like wildfire across the Yard. Pop! PopopopPOP! They were firing the canisters pointblank into the thickest crowd of convicts. The phalanx raised its forest of long sticks and charged.

  Joe bolted willynilly with the rest. The yellowish clouds billowed across the Yard. There was no haven from the gas, a saffron pall enshrouded all. Joe’s eyes boiled in their sockets; his breath licked up his throat like flames. Ripping off his shirt to cover his mouth helped not at all. Now the only sounds were the guards’ oaths and the choking and retching of convicts. The P.A. ripsawed through the gangrenous fog: “Face down, spread your arms and legs. Down or we fire! Down!”

  In short order all the convicts were spread belly down on the grass where the gas was thickest. The masked guards patrolled among them, clubbing any who spoke or moved. One by one they were ordered to rise and proceed to the gates. There they were stripsearched and passed naked down a gauntlet of jeering guards.

  “Awrite, you pukus delecti!” a towheaded Gooner crowed jubilantly when Joe’s turn came. “Bend over and crack yo daddy some redeye, punk!” Joe bent and reached behind and spread his buttocks. The Gooner spotted the stitches and windmilled his arm for the other guards to come have a look. “We got us one’s been tampered with … big time!” “Tampered hell,” Joe heard a voice younger than his own. “There’s been so much stick pussy shoved up that Hershey road they could rent it out for a convention center …” “Why, rub a little anchovy on that button n I might jist believe it was real pussy …” On and on, an anal liturgy fouling the balmy June air with a drone like typhusladen mosquitoes.

  It was twilight before the Yard finally was cleared. Joe watched from his cell window the last con being searched and run inside over the bodies of those who’d fallen beneath the gauntlet’s clubs. Stretchers had to be called to collect these as well as the several bodies still lying on the scrabbly grass by the pitcher’s mound. From the shrieks and bright splintered bone sticking through prison blues, Joe surmised they’d been hit by deliberately aimed canisters.

  Finally no sign of that afternoon’s atrocity remained, save the shape still kneeling where it had dropped at the base of the outer fence. Whether it had been left purposefully on display or simply forgotten, Joe didn’t know. While every P.A. in Vacaville blared over and over: “Lockdown, Lockdown … Remain standing by your bunks for count … General Lockdown …” Joe stared at the corpse genuflected in the mud of its own blood and marveled that his dream of the man he might have been had taken flesh just long enough to denounce itself by dying, as if to expose Joe’s own delusions. On he stared at the crumpled form merging with the gloom, stared until his eyes burned as though some avenging specter of Whisper Moran conjured by the sheer force of Joe’s outrage might yet arise from the dim ravening dust.

  THE GRAY GOOSE

  The transport dock faced west where the last stars were melting on the coral lip of dawn. It had rained the night before; inky pools reflected a sky darker than the one above, filled with rosecolored clouds. The Vacaville cellblocks were trimmed with bright runnels of water tinseling in drains. The cold wind cracked Joe’s cheeks.

  Alongside the dock idled a converted Greyhound bus. Painted battleship gray, its windows were welded shut and screened with steel mesh. Black fumes growled from its diesels.

  “I’m just glad my mother didnt live to see this day,” cooed a familiar voice beside Joe. “She’d never understand why I couldnt come home weekends.”

  It was Oblivia, who had arrived at Vacaville a week after Joe. She was hardly recognizable without her tinsel wig and warpaint. Surprisingly, she hadn’t fallen for the old rip and run at the Blue Note. Turns out she had some side action the Manager didn’t know about. During the day, Oblivia would dress up as a nurse, sashay into hospitals, and loot their pharmacy stores. Until the day the security guard caught her. She had the rentacop half convinced she was looking for a job application in the narcotics box when the real heat arrived. The sergeant was writing her a summons for simple trespass when out of her pocket fell a forged Dilaudid prescription. So it was down to the station for a full booking. The sergeant called for a matron to conduct the stripsearch. That’s when Oblivia said, “Cmere, buster. I got something to confess.” “I already know,” said the sergeant. “You’re not a nurse.”

  “This Gray Goose stops at Quentin, Soledad, and Coldwater, Barker,” said Oblivia, shaking her chains at the idling bus. “Where you tagged?”

  “Coldwater,” Joe said. He’d discovered this just an hour ago from the owlish convict photographer who was also under transport. He was waiting at the head
of the cellblock while the guard woke Joe and told him to roll it up. By now Joe knew his name was Earl Fitzgerald, and the convicts called him F Stop. Coldwater, he told Joe in a musty mutter, was no country club, but it wasn’t a gladiator school either. At this favorable turn of fate Joe felt that familiar bitter blend of joy and grief. Whisper must have fixed it. With a smile he remembered the ganglord’s assurances that it was the animals who ran the zoo. Why else would the convict photographer be shepherding him? Whisper’s old friend was the executor of his unwritten will.

  “Goody!” trilled Oblivia, jumping up and down, jingling her legirons. “That’s where I’m going. It’s just like camp!”

  F Stop stood shackled in front of Joe, holding a cardboard orange carton elevated like a monstrance. He turned and frowned at Oblivia.

  “Oh, Barker,” Oblivia gushed on. “You dont know how long I’ve dreamed of being on a desert island with you … but prison will do in a pinch.” Like a debauched Gila monster she vibrated her tongue at him.

  Over the rumbling diesels Joe heard a fourth convict warbling “Witchcraft.” He smiled recognizing Duck Butter’s felt falsetto. It was the same ditty the highyaller hophead would sing to signal he held junk for sale as he strolled down Eddy Street, trailing dopefiends like the rats of Hamlin.

  His smile turned up full wattage when Duck Butter emerged onto the transport dock carrying Spencer in his arms. “Small world,” Joe said.

  “Got a way of shrinking inside these felony spas,” Spencer chirped. He looked even frailer out of his wheelchair, reminding Joe of religious pictures of the dead Christ lifted down from his cross. “State’s gonna give me a new one,” Spencer answered Joe’s query about the absent wheelchair. “That’s why I’m going to Coldwater. It’s got the biggest hospital in the system.”